June 6th: The United Kingdom (UK), United States (US) and Canada land in Normandy, France, in the D-Day landings. US, UK and other Allied forces have fought in the Mediterranean and Italy for the past 11 months, in order to draw German forces away from the main invasion area. The four years of war against Germany see 26.5 million Russian dead in contrast to 300,000 American in all theatres of war, and 390,000 British dead.

February 4: The Yalta Conference occurs, deciding the post-war status of Germany. The Allies (the USA, the USSR, Great Britain and France) to divide Germany into four occupation zones. Also the nations agreed that free elections were to be held in all countries occupied by Nazi Germany. In addition the new United Nations would replace the failed League of Nations.

August 2: The Potsdam Conference ends with the Potsdam Agreement that organizes the division and reconstruction of Europe after World War II. New boundaries of Poland were agreed. After the agreement to divide Germany into four zones [Yalta Conference], the four nations also decide to split Germany's capital, Berlin into four zones as well. They also agree to start legal trials at Nuremberg of the Nazi War criminals.

August 6: US President Truman gives permission for the world's first military use of an atomic weapon against the Japanese city of Hiroshima in an attempt to bring the only remaining theater of war from the Second World War in the Pacific to a swift close.

August 8: The USSR honors its agreement to declare war on Japan within three months of the victory in Europe, and in Operation August Storm invades Manchuria. In accordance with the Yalta Conference agreements, the Soviet Union also invades Japanese Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

August 9: US President Truman gives permission for the world's second and last military use of an atomic weapon against the Japanese city of Nagasaki in order to try to secure a swift Japanese unconditional surrender in the end of the Second World War.

January 1: The American and British zones of control in Germany are united to form the Bizone also known as Bizonia.

March 12: United States President Harry Truman announces the Truman Doctrine. The Doctrine states that the USA will remain committed to "contain" further communist expansion. Truman cites the domino effect as a possibility.

July 11: The US announces new occupation policies in Germany. The occupation directive JCS 1067, whose economic section had prohibited "steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany [or] designed to maintain or strengthen the German economy", is replaced by the new US occupation directive JCS 1779 which instead notes that "An orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."

November 14: The United Nations passes a resolution calling for the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Korea, free elections in each of the two administrations, and the creation of a UN commission dedicated to the unification of the peninsula.

June 18: The elected leftist Guatemalan government is overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. An unstable rightist regime installs itself. Opposition leads to a guerrilla war with Marxist rebels in which major human rights abuses are committed on all sides. Nevertheless, the regime survives until the end of the Cold War.

October 23: 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Hungarians revolt against the Soviet dominated government. They are crushed by the Soviet military, which reinstates a Communist government.

October 29: Suez Crisis: France, Israel, and the United Kingdom attack Egypt with the goal of removing Nasser from power. International diplomatic pressures force the attackers to withdraw. Canadian Lester B. Pearson encourages the United Nations to send a Peacekeeping force -the first of its kind- to the disputed territory. Lester B. Pearson wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his actions, and soon after becomes Canadian Prime Minister.

July 14: A coup in Iraq, the 14 July Revolution, removes the pro-British monarch. Iraq begins to receive support from the Soviets. Iraq will maintain close ties with the Soviets throughout the Cold War.

December: Formation of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. It is a Communist insurgent movement that vows to overthrow the anti-communist South Vietnamese government. It is supplied extensively by North Vietnam.

June: Sino-Soviet split: The Chinese leadership, angered at being treated as the "junior partner" to the Soviet Union, declares its version of Communism superior and begin to compete with the Soviets for influence, thus adding a third dimension to the Cold War.

October 16: Cuban Missile Crisis: The Soviets have secretly been installing military bases, including nuclear weapons, on Cuba, some 90 miles from the US mainland. Kennedy orders a "quarantine" (a naval blockade) of the island that intensifies the crisis and brings the US and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war. In the end, the Soviets back down and agree to withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba, in exchange for a secret agreement by Kennedy pledging to withdraw similar American missiles from Turkey, and guaranteeing that the US will not move against the Castro regime.

November 21: End of the Himalayan War. China occupies a small strip of Indian land. The war will influence India, one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement, to indeed align itself with the Soviets in a decade.

May 12: Mayagüez incident: The Khmer Rouge seize an American naval ship prompting American intervention to recapture the ship and its crew. In the end, the crew is released from captivity.

June 25: Portugal withdraws from Angola and Mozambique, where Marxist governments are installed, the former with backing from Cuban troops. The Civil war engulfs both nations and involves Angolans, Mozambicans, South Africans, and Cubans, with the superpowers supporting their respective ideologies.

August 31: In Poland the Gdańsk Agreement is signed after a strike wave starting at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk. The agreement allows greater civil rights, such as the establishment of a trade union independent of communist party control.

June: Gorbachev announces Glasnost and Perestroika. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking glasnost is to pressure conservatives within the Party who oppose his policies of economic restructuring - perestroika. Mikhail Gorbachev hopes that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people will support and participate in perestroika.